This Isn’t Feminism, It’s Technology
Mar 16 2008 
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In light of recent posts and discussions surrounding Susan Mernit and Stephanie Booth’s responses to Louis Gray’s "elite" FriendFeed list not having an equally proportionate amount of females on it, I feel a response from another woman in tech is necessary: stop your whining already!
If someone were to ask me to make a similar list, my response would be equal to Louis’, though not because I would list the same people (I wouldn’t). My list would be equally similar because males would dominate it. And make no mistake about it, I have no qualms about that fact. On the other hand, it seems Susan Mernit can’t say the same:
"I was irked that Gray’s A list of thirty-plus has just two women; on other hands, it’s really a list of bloggers he reads, it’s really no big deal–even if one if them seems to be a friend he keeps promoting."
If it’s no big deal, then why did you have an opinion about what’s on it and what’s missing? Why were you "irked"? Louis Gray calls it pointing out discrepancies. This is true, but overall, Mernit comes off as is if she’s whining. His list IS a big deal. I’ve made priceless amounts of connections and exponentially expanded not only my site, but also my social network and I’m sure others on the list could say the same. In fact, they have! I wouldn’t call that "no big deal". What you should’ve said was that those on the list we’re no big deal to you, but then what would’ve been the point of your post?
The Focus Is Not Sex/Gender
There are only two women who I would add to my list: Sarah Perez of Sarahintampa and Erin Kotecki Vest (QueenofSpain on Twitter). Everyone else would be men. Sarah and Erin make my list because they are the most relevant women in Tech to me. They’re relevant to me and in my eyes, this also makes them a big deal. They’re also very much noticed by males (and females) in the tech industry and I highly doubt that it’s all because of their good looks and charms! They’re visible and relevant to me and others!
"[...] there’s something to be said about the number of women in tech. Obviously!" – Erin Kotecki Veset (QueenofSpain)
This isn’t a battle of the sexes. Sex and gender play an insignificant role in the overall focus. The focus is Technology. Louis Gray doesn’t support me the way he does because I’m a female. Neither does Steven Hodson. Neither do the 150+ people following on Twitter! They support and share their own spotlights with me because I’m relevant. Sometimes only to them, sometimes to the conversation with others, sometimes both. Nevertheless, I’m relevant someway, somehow. If I wasn’t, Merit wouldn’t have raised flags about me beyond noting that there were two women on the list because you didn’t even bother to Liz Gannes of GigaOm.
They Are Relevant
I know people because they’re relevant. Up until this whole ordeal, I had no clue who Mernit and Booth were. Never heard of them before a day in my life. Either I missed the conversation or they just don’t travel in my circles. If it’s the latter than there’s a certain amount of respect that’s due to Louis and placing the fault on gender, when there’s no fault to begin with, is just pointless. You just may not be relevant or maybe you don’t run in the same circles. My name is being tweeted. My brand, my image, my site is being shared and discussed because I’m not only relevant, but I’m putting myself out there. Some people still don’t know who I am(I’ve a long journey ahead). Some just found out about me. In the end, I’m either irrelevant to them or relevant. They’ll stick around or they won’t. They’ll dismiss me or promote me and I don’t think it has very much to do with gender.
Making The Effort
Women are no longer as excluded as they used to be. I can’t speak for the last few years, but I’ve neither felt nor heard about such exclusions in Tech towards women in the previous year or so. Things have changed to some extent. When asking Erin Veset for her opinion, she Twitter’s me:
[...] but the fact is this space just isn’t what it used to be. last night 20 mom bloggers were talking with winer and kawasaki until 2am. now they are looking at new apps and thinking of consulting. We were shunned and would never think of talking tech or to those guys. with twitter-now it’s natural and normal and we all chat.
this momblogger just spent 4 days at sxsw. here was no disconnect between genders talking social media, tech. all were discussing it with me without bias and I was chatting right back
When I blog, I’m not thinking about the fact that I’m a female blogger and I don’t attempt to cater to an all female audience. I simply blog with my personal tech interests in mind, so that others can find me and share their thoughts. I don’t care what the gender is, and I’m sure they don’t either. Many things may weigh in on the decision, but ultimately relevancy is the deciding factor!
Technorati tags: louis gray, queenofspain, erin veset, bloggers, female bloggers, male bloggers, susan mernit, stephanie booth, sarah perez, sarahintampa, steven hodson
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I’m still wary about being called ‘tech’ but I need to just EMBRACE it. ;)
Seriously though, the circles are now bigger, the communities are cross pollinating. Its a whole new ballgame and I don’t see gender as an issue OTHER than wanting to see more women step up to the plate.
I’ll confess that I haven’t read Louis Gray’s original list, and therefore can’t comment on the virtues (or lack thereof) of his list.
However, it is in some respects hard to construct a list of “elites,” male or female, at least in my case. For example, my Google Reader feed includes feeds from Mrs. Loquacious and Connie Reece. How does one objectively know that Mrs. Loquacious should be added to a list of relevant bloggers and Connie Reece shouldn’t – or vice versa? Now I’ll grant that Mrs. Loquacious doesn’t blog a lot about tech topics, but when she does blog, I find her posts are relevant to me.
I suspect that if I were to construct a list of my favorite bloggers, it would include a lot of people who are well below Duncan Riley’s category of A list bloggers. But my list meets my personal needs, as does your list and Louis’ list.
P.S. For what it’s worth, I had never heard of you before Saturday morning, and now I’m subscribing to your feed, and I just joined your group of Twitter followers as I was typing this reply. So the word is getting out… :)
P.P.S. @queenofspain is neat also.
I’ve only been using FriendFeed for a brief period (and even then, infrequently), so I’m hardly qualified to speak to the merits of this post per se, but I did want to note that I found your site via a tweet from @QueenofSpain, and: you’re damned right, she’s relevant! As a mostly non-tech-focused woman blogger I really appreciate the extent to which she’s a tech trailblazer, making the possibilities of social media much clearer (and more interesting) to the rest of us.
Do you consider my post “whining”? I tried precisely not to make it that. It doesn’t make me upset or go off my rocker to see a male-dominated list of bloggers — it invites me to think, and that is what I tried to do. The list of women I provided was there to make a balance and maybe to make other people think, or discover female writers they did not know.
Whining? I don’t feel included in that description.
@Victoria Marinelli – The woman is brilliant! I conversed with her over the phone last night and she’s wonderful. What’s so ironic is that sometimes she’s at a complete lost about certain aspects of tech, but she’s willing to admit that and learn and ask questions. Erin is awesomesauce!
@Stephanie Booth – “I definitely didn’t think you were whining! Your post was very clear and educational. On top of that, you made a great list of other women, some of whom I’ve now added to both FriendFeed an Twitter! I didn’t think you were whining though. I was just pointing out your post as a reference point for the rest of the article, for others to consider.
Thanks for responding!”
I think its a little of both. There are certainly as many women out here as there are men. Maybe some of us grasp the newest shiny tool first, but the disproportionate numbers don’t account for just that.
Aloha & THANKS for this post.
It allowed me to meet SEVERAL more cool Relevant women in “tech” and add them as friends and twits :)) (Hopefully all readers are familiar with Twitter to appreciate that bout of humor :)
All I want to see – is women getting involved in the conversation, playing an active role, supporting one another like men do (only BETTER :P) annnnnnd Just DOING IT!
I mean – why whine when you can Just Do It!
right?!
btw: Kudos to BOTH women who brought this topic to the forefront of our minds.
whine, or don’t whine
DO or don’t whine
just PARTICIPATE and
Get ‘er Done!
:)
Thanks for including me on your list :)
I had to sit on this post for a bit before I could reply. You know I love you, but at the same time, you haven’t been out in the tech workforce. Blogging is just a subset of the tech world.
I’d had to work for men who knew less than I did, but got promoted over me for no good reason. I’ve been FIRED for pointing out that these same men were wasting company resources by outsourcing work to agencies (not offshore, mind you) and consultants that we were already able to do in-house, simply because they didn’t understand the technology that their “less qualified” employees did.
I’m far from world’s biggest feminist, but I’ve worked in either tech or engineering industries in one form or another for over 15 years. When I first started out in the workforce after college, I assumed women already WERE equal, but it’s not the case. We still have to shout to be heard.
The relevant thing is key. this is a great example of relevance and getting hooked by relevance not identity politics on twitter.